Pun Salad

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A weird little movie, but I was intrigued by the trailer I ran across at Facebook. And I've been strangely intrigued by Katie Holmes' occasional crooked grin.

Katie plays Miss Meadows, and trailer-level/movie poster spoiler: she shoots first and asks questions… never, because she tends to leave no survivors. Arguably, she's only delivering rough vigilante justice.

But that's not quite right; she doesn't go out looking for bad guys, like Batman. She just finds herself in situations where it's appropriate for her to pull the cute chrome-plated semi-auto .25 from her purse.

She's an oddball in other ways, too, thanks to being emotionally scarred by a traumatic childhood incident, only revealed near the end of the movie. She takes up with the local sheriff who's charged with investigating some of her shootings. (That's James Badge Dale, who played a very bad guy in Iron Man 3.)

The movie is unrated by the MPA, but it's pretty intense in some spots; see IMDB's parental guidance page.

As sometimes happens—probably more often than it should—I go looking for a big dumb violence-laden movie on the streaming services. Google's more than willing to help out. I settled on this one from 2020. It stars Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth; he made it in between Marvel movies.

It's set in Bangladesh, where a drug cartel has (violently) kidnapped the young son of the head of a different drug cartel. A private mercenary force is enlisted to go rescue the kid. Nearly-immediate carnage and betrayal results, with pretty much the only survivor being Tyler Rake (Hemsworth), left alone with the near-impossible task of getting the boy out of Bangladesh, across a bridge leading to (relatively) safe Indian territory.

We know from the first few minutes (so this isn't really a spoiler) that Tyler winds up on that bridge, badly wounded, barely able to crawl. Most of the rest of the movie shows us how he got there: by shooting, and getting shot at by, a nearly unlimited supply of bad guys. Fortunately, they all took their marksmanship training from the Imperial Stormtrooper Academy from Star Wars. And Tyler has a near-infinite supply of ammo and (just to mix it up a bit) knives and explosives.

The action scenes are intense and non-stop, and I stayed awake. Extraction 2 is also available on Netflix, and I will probably check that out someday.

Back in 2019, I watched Eddie Murphy host an episode of Saturday Night Live. I was impressed at how well he resurrected his old iconic characters and made me laugh at what could have been by-the-numbers rehashing. I wasn't alone, I guess: he got an Emmy for his performance that evening.

(He also showed up on SNL's 50th anniversary special. And gave a hilarious, dead-on, impression of Tracy Morgan…

… while standing next to Tracy Morgan.)

Anyway, back in 2019, he plugged this movie. And I finally got around to watching it, seven years later. It's pretty good! It got shut out at the Oscars, but got plenty of other nods.

It's the story of Rudy Ray Moore in the 1970s, as he works his way up from (roughly) nowhere, to stand-up comic, to R-rated musician, to (eventually) starring in Dolemite, his dream blaxploitation flick. An inspiring story!

Sensitive souls might want to shy away, see the IMDB parental guides; somebody actually counted all the f-bomb varieties!

As a final bonus, an uncredited cameo from … hey, that voice, is that … yes, Bob Odenkirk!

And now, sometime in the next seven years, I gotta watch Dolemite.

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This is one of those "let's see what this is about" movies: it showed up "free-to-me" on HBO Max, and since I liked Bob Odenkirk, and his previous two action movies, and that's him with a big gun on the movie poster… hey, why not?

Executive summary: this one is more violent, more morally ambiguous, and less family-valued than the Nobody movies. The dark-comedy dial is turned up to 11. I'm pretty sure Mrs. Salad would have not liked it.

Odenkirk plays Ulysses Richardson, who is trying to make a career of substitute-policing. His current gig is in wintry Normal, Minnesota, where the town's police chief has passed away under mysterious circumstances: frozen, naked, with a fly rod in one hand and an ice auger in the other. (But as someone eventually points out: you don't use a fly rod for ice fishing.)

But Ulysses is content to ride out his tenure in Normal without making waves about the suspicious death of his predecessor. And everyone in town is friendly enough to him … until a couple of bozos try to hold up the local bank. Gee, could that be related (somehow) to the opening Yakusa scene, where grisly punishments were exacted, and an unenthusiastic underling was sent to Normal? You betcha.

Anyway, Ulysses finds himself the target of (approximately) all 1,890 residents of Normal. Can he figure out an exit strategy? He does, but…

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Pun Son and I actually went to BarnZ's movie theater in Barrington to see this a few months back. Alas, I fell asleep at some critical point, and I didn't feel right about reporting it at the time. But it showed up free-to-me on Netflix, and I got an early start (after watching a new Futurama episode on Hulu), and …

Well, I'm not sure I stayed awake for the whole thing this time either, but what I saw was good.

As the movie opens, young Spike has been abducted by the "Jimmies", a deranged group of youngsters that see their task in the zombified world of the future as torturing and killing the innocent. Why? I think the movie blames an overdose of Teletubbies-watching at an impressionable age. Spike manages to survive his initial trial, through sheer, horrible, luck.

Meanwhile Dr. Kerson (from the previous movie) has gone slightly insane in his own way, constructing the "temple" of the title out of salvaged human skeletons. Impressive! But he still has a good heart, and manages to befriend "Samson", an infected, hairy zombie; the Doctor tries to resurrect Samson's human side using anti-psychotic meds. He doesn't say "He's crazy, so this might just work," but he could.

Eventually, the Jimmies and Dr. Kerson meet up, and there is a thrilling climax. And also a setup for the next movie.

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I found myself in the Noir mood, and this oldie from 1947 was available (free-to-me-with-ads) on the Tubi service, so… It's the real deal, with Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, and Lizabeth Scott providing a lot of black and white chemistry.

Burt plays Frankie Madison, just out of the slammer after 14 years. He didn't squeal on his criminal partner, Noll Turner (Kirk) back then, and he's looking to redeem a promise Noll made to him just before he was nabbed about being 50-50 partners.

After escaping the law, Noll did OK for himself, acquiring a fancy nightclub and a sultry blonde singer/girlfriend, Kay. (That is, of course, Lizabeth Scott.) Only problem is that Noll is kind of a greedy, manipulative weasel; he has no intention of making Frankie his co-partner. If only Frankie had paid attention in Criminal School, where they taught that there's no honor among thieves!

The movie details Frankie's efforts to get what's coming to him, involving shifting alliances with Kay, and also Noll's bookkeeper, Dave (Wendell Corey!). Eventually there's a savage beating (delivered mainly by Mike Mazurki!), a murder, a frame-up, a shootout, …

So, pretty standard fare, but I stayed awake.

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I like John Krasinski as action hero Jack Ryan just fine. He's an able substitute for (hold your breath) Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, and Chris Pine. Once you get over Jim from "The Office" shooting people, he does a good job.

This is on Amazon Prime, and unlike Krasinski's previous outings in the role, it's a single, stand-alone movie. As things open, Jack has eschewed his spying roles, and has taken a role in the private sector. He's also lost his girlfriend, Cathy, for some reason. (Major departure from the books and early movies!) But (as opening scenes reveal) there's some violence happening in Dubai, as good guys try (and fatally fail) in their mission to extract … something.

To be honest, the plot was nearly incomprehensible to me, other than knowing who the good guys and bad guys were. It serves mainly to string together a lot of gunplay, car chases, explosions, and the like. Mainly because the bad guys seemed to have a supernatural ability to know what the good guys were up to. Fortunately, Jack has an equally uncanny ability to deduce what the bad guys are up to. But not always quickly enough to avoid good guy fatalities.

Wendell Pierce is back as Jack's once and future boss; Michael Kelly is here as Jack's wisecracking (and very deadly) sidekick. They are good too. Sienna Miller shows up as a chain-smoking MI6 operative, and she and Jack exchange banter.

I guess this movie is suffering at the box office (ScreenRant: "The Mandalorian And Grogu Box Office Suffers With Star Wars' Worst-Ever Week 2 Drop"). Some of the reviews have been mediocre. Well, let me tell you: my mileage varied. Pun Son and I attended a Saturday evening show, and I found my face hurting from smiling so much.

It probably helped that I watched the streaming series, and got accustomed to the Mandalorian's reluctant heroism, and even more reluctant surrogate parenthood of Baby Yoda.

And maybe also helping is the presence of Sigourney Weaver, whom I've kind of adored since watching her in Alien 47 years ago. (She looks great!)

Here, the movie opens up with a slam-bang action sequence, as Mando is on the trail of a leftover thug from the not-quite-defunct Empire. After much violence (it appears that Mando has taken lessons from John Wick) he returns to meet with Ward (Sigourney) for his next assignment. Which turns out to be even more dangerous. More explosions, betrayals, monsters (including Hutts!), escapes, scares, … It's a lot of fun.

I was in the mood for a big dumb violent movie, and this fit the bill. Even though the script is just a semi-redo of Predator. I liked the star, Alan Ritchson, for his portrayal of Reacher over on Amazon Prime; this one's on Netflix. And I stayed awake, something I haven't managed to do while trying to watch Season One of The Expanse.

Ritchson plays "81", his number at the Army's "Ranger Assessment and Selection Program", a brutal winnowing-out process to ensure that only the toughest make it into the Rangers. He's there thanks to a promise made to his (doomed) brother in an opening scene set in Afghanistan, just before a devastating Taliban attack that leaves everyone else dead or dying.

So 81's got some psychological problems, he's looking to prove something, and so he makes it to the very final test, and… that's when the War Machine shows up, a malicious killer robot dropped in from outer space, by coincidence landing only a hop skip and jump from the Ranger exercise.

Now, if you haven't seen Predator, go and watch it, it's a much better movie. But if you have seen Predator, you can probably guess at what happens: being hopelessly out-teched by the alien device, 81's team gets slaughtered in variously painful and gory ways. But (not really a spoiler) 81 survives for a final desperate showdown. And if you recall some otherwise superfluous dialog from the opening scene, you'll know how that develops.

And, oh yeah, just like Predator, there's a sequel setup.

And finally: is that Dennis Quaid? Yes it is, and he looks even older than his actual 72 years. And he doesn't smile once.

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Waay back in 1968, when I was a lad of 17, I read a laudatory review of No Way to Treat a Lady in Time magazine. And so I went to see it. In an actual movie theater! I remember enjoying it. Times were simpler back then. When I noticed that it was available free-to-me on my Roku (via PlutoTV, with a lot of ads), I bit.

Rod Steiger plays Christopher Gill, a rich actor/director in Manhattan's Theater District. Unfortunately, he has unresolved mommy issues, so he takes up a serial-killing hobby, preying on middle-aged women (well, usually women) living alone. He uses his talents in makeup, costumery, and accents to disguise himself in various identities.

The case gets assigned to Detective Morris ("Mo") Brummel (George Segal), who lives with his very stereotypical Jewish mother (Eileen Heckart). Mo becomes enamored with Kate (Lee Remick), a witness who happened to notice Gill's approach to the first victim.

Gill, publicity hound that he is, becomes obsessed with how he's being covered in the press, and starts phoning Mo. (This is in the days before caller ID.) A cat-and-mouse game ensues! Gill notices Mo's developing relationship with Kate, will she eventually be targeted as a victim?

Still a lot of fun to watch, 58 years later. You can read the Time review that impressed me back then right here.